Monday, October 25, 2010

Gregory Isaacs passed away at age 59

Sad sad news reached the reggae world today: the Cool Ruler, Gregory Isaacs passed away early this morning when he lost the battle with cancer. One of my all-time favourite singers together with Delroy Wilson and Dennis Brown. Surely they'll have a big musical reunion up there! Gregory could voice cultural / reality lyrics as convincing as the smooth lovers lyrics he got ladies filling the first rows at all his stage shows with. Great voice, great flow, great original and poetic lyrics, great artist. I've always had a special soft spot for his lovers tunes from the early 80s with the Roots Radics (the albums The Lonely Lover, More Gregory, Night Nurse and Out Deh), of which a nice selection that I made years ago can be heard by clicking play in the below player (strictly lovers stylee):

(if you want to listen these 30 min of Gregory meets the Radics later you can download it here, though I gotta admit, the music is excellent, the mixing nothing special as I made it a long time ago, so this is a 'for the music only' kinda thing)

It must be said that Gregory's 70s and 80s output is overall very impressive if you ask me. Classic albums of the roots era like Extra Classic, Mr. Isaacs, Soon Forward, Cool Ruler, In Person etc. were nicely followed by amongst others the aforementioned albums with the Radics after which Gregory kept releasing some quality albums in the digital years of the later 80s like Warning, Victim, Watchman Of The City, Red Rose For Gregory, Feature Attraction and more. It is true that he made his fair share of weaker albums from the late 80s on (though still some highlights too), but on a day like this there's only room for focussing on the good stuff if you ask me. A true legend left us, but he left behind a catalogue of wicked music that will please many generations to come. RIP Cool Ruler, you'll be missed. My condolences to his family, friends and fans. Lots of strength to you all.

As an impression of his prolific carreer here's a discography of studio albums of original material as it is posted on wikipedia with a few titles added I found missing from that list (there's numerous compilations, live albums and probably some other studio titles missing here, but this list is still pretty close to complete when it comes to his studio albums):

With Gregory's passing 2010 is becoming sadder and sadder for us lovers of foundation reggae. We already lost Yabby You, Bobby Melody and Sugar Minott this year, and now Gregory Isaacs, what a sad realization. RIP to all a dem. Now let us all play some Gregory in respect to the man's work. I'll start with his album More Gregory, cause we'll always wanna hear More Gregory!

2 comments:

i wanted to thank the work you did with gregory's tunes! i have put your mix on my blog cos i needed it for the tribute i wanted to do for the cool ruler...of course i give the link to your blog which is great! Jah guide i&i and may he bless you!behem74 dehttp://passiondureggae.over-blog.com

BMC's Reggae Blog

Welcome to my blog! I'm BMC, a music lover and preferably play the good old wax: vinyl 4 life! I use this blog primarily to post my latest reggae mixes, as an archive for tracklists of mixes I did in the past, pictures of records/sleeves I love and occassionally for further reggae related topics like reviews, videos, information on releases, live shows and more.

What I try to achieve with my mixes is to show listeners the lovely music that is out there, to make listeners enjoy themselves through the power of the music and last but not least to hopefully introduce listeners to artists, riddims, tunes, producers and / or labels that they otherwise might not have heard of and with that possibly a bit of extra exposure maybe even leading to people buying, visiting shows or at least following those involved more closely. I'm very pleased to have had numerous compliments and comments of appreciation from people in the business (artists, producers and label-owners from JA, UK and EU) encouraging this way of using their music for more exposure and as appreciation for their works! Thanks to all listeners for your support, but also to all included artists, producers, musicians and labels for the great music!

For info, contact or promo-material you'd like me to use in a mix send me a mail at: